The ‘Early Medieval' Origins of India

This radical reinterpretation of Indian history traces the origins of India's institutions, ideas and identities to the 'early medieval' period.

Manu V. Devadevan (Author)

9781108494571, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 3 December 2020

524 pages
23.6 x 16.1 x 3.9 cm, 0.82 kg

'… Devadevan uses a truly impressive range of examples from politics, religion, philosophy, architecture, literature, and economy to support his thesis. … With an approach indebted to the work of the Keralan historian and epigraphist Kesavan Veluthat and a sweeping command of his material, Devadevan has produced a work that deserves to be read and discussed…' Brian Collins, Religon

India is generally regarded as a civilization with a set of intrinsic attributes that emerged in the age of the Vedas or, better still, in the Harappan times. In recent decades, historical studies have moved away from rigid perspectives of singularity in origin and expansion; the emphasis now is on pluralities and long-term processes spanning centuries and millennia. There is also an influential school of thought which rejects antiquity claims such as these and holds that India is a construct of the colonial and nationalist imagination. In his radical reinterpretation of India's past, Manu V. Devadevan moves away from these reifying assessments to examine the evolution of institutions, ideas and identities that are characterized, typically, as Indian. In lieu of endorsing their Indianness, he traces their emergence to specific conditions that developed in India between 600 and 1200 CE, a period which historians now call the 'early medieval'.

List of tables
List of maps and figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. Institutions: 1. State formation and its structural foundations
2. From the cult of chivalry to the cult of personality: the seventh-century transformation in Pallava statecraft
3. Changes in land relations and the changing fortunes of the Cēra state
4. Temple and territory in the Puri Jagannātha imaginaire
Part II. Ideas: 5. Svayamòbuddha's predilections: the epistemologies of time and knowledge
6. Bhāravi and the creation of a literary paradigm
7. Knowing and being: the semantic universe of the Kūdòiyātòtòamò theatre
8. The invention of zero and its intellectual legacy
Part III. Identities: 9. The evolution of vernacular languages: a case study of Kannada
10. Religious identities in times of Indumaulòi's grief
11. Caste, gender and the landed patriarchy
12. The making of territorial self consciousness (with particular reference to Kaliṅga)
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Medieval history [HBLC1], Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500 [HBLC], Asian history [HBJF], History [HB]